Abstract
At a time when nearly every nation-state on the planet grows more ethnically diverse due to intensifying global mobility, the nation is being re-thought a great deal. Busbridge’s book approaches the topic with the Australian nation at its centre – one that is both ‘postcolonial’ and ‘multicultural’. Therefore, her conceptual framework brings together multiculturalism and postcolonialism, two much debated notions that are usually kept separate in their own (crowded) disciplinary and theoretical enclosures. In the Australian context, multiculturalism is normally debated in the context of immigration and consequent ‘ethnic relations’, while (post)colonial theory usually gets entangled with the position of Indigenous Australians in a nation dominated by white Anglo-Saxon coloni(ali)sts. The two concepts – multiculturalism and postcolonial citizenship – meet already in the preface, where Busbridge declares that the nation is not necessarily a villain in her postcolonial, multicultural Australian story.
The book consists of seven self-standing chapters, with chapter 1 offering a conceptual introduction and chapter 7 a short concluding piece. In between, and particularly in chapters 5 and 6, the author focuses on the two most Othered Australian minorities, Aboriginal Australians and Muslim Australians.
In the introductory chapter titled ‘Rethinking the Nation’ Busbridge sets a framework for her analysis and presents her central propositions. She asserts that the ‘nation remains resonant in contemporary life as the dominant form of political community, also the main site of contestation and competing claims’ (p. 3). She reflects briefly on the Australian version of the ‘global revival of populist nationalism’ driven by ‘rapid diversification of societies combined with the uncertainties of globalisation’ (p. 5), in the form of minor but loud anti-immigration and anti-multiculturalism parties such as the Reclaim Australia Party that demands national unity and assimilation of minorities. In contrast to these voices, the multicultural politics of recognition nowadays rubs shoulders with a much maligned (at least in the dominant centrist-tending-right political discourse) ‘identity politics’. Busbridge also diagnoses the postcolonial suspicion of multiculturalism, especially of its liberal variant which simplifies and essentialises cultural identities. According to Busbridge, throwing a ‘postcolonial cast over multicultural politics of recognition serves a pertinent reminder that “difference” is not a neutral or innocent category, but rather embroiled in hierarchy and conflict’ (p. 9). In this conceptual scheme, ‘postcolonial citizenship builds on, but does not supplant, multicultural citizenship’ (p. 11), and the ‘postcolonial lens affords an enlarged perspective on nation’ – regional, global, civilisational.
In chapters 2 and 3, respectively titled ‘Conceptualising Nation: Discourse, Democracy and Post-colonial Debate’ and ‘Contingent Universals and Shifting Particulars: Reorienting Recognition Struggles’, Busbridge continues her theoretical labours with deep roots in the work of classic and contemporary scholars of nation and nationalism such as Said, Nairn, Calhoun, Anderson, Smith, Brubaker and many others, but also in the work of postcolonialism celebrities such as Fanon, Bhabha, Spivak, Gilroy, and so on – a rather impressive literature review that did not miss out anyone that should be there. As far as this reviewer is concerned, Wimmer and Glick-Shiller with their much cited but theoretically thin ‘methodological nationalism’ could have been left out. In chapter 4, Busbridge digs even deeper into theory, focusing on Judith Butler’s ‘Hegelian account of universality as a site of hegemonic contestations’ (p. 78), competing universalisms and postcolonial feminism. She brings the analysis closer to home by (yet another!) exegesis of Ghassan’s Hage’s White Nation as well as his later writing.
In chapters 5 and 6, which could be loosely considered the ‘data chapters’ Busbridge applies her theoretical schema to the struggle for recognition by Muslim Australians and Indigenous Australians, the two most Othered and ‘misrecognised’ minorities within the Australian postcolonial nation. In chapter 5, she offers an exegesis of two Muslim contributions to the Australian popular culture: the ‘Salam Café’, a decade old ‘Muslim [TV] panel chat show’ (p. 121) and an internationally performed stand-up comedy show ‘Fear of a Brown Planet’. Busbridge shows that these were important contributions to ‘humanising Muslims’ and ‘normalising difference’, as well as to critiquing the Australian ‘mainstream’ in a way that is generally acceptable in the humour-loving nation, by the ‘angry’ second-generation Muslim-Australians who kept being stereotyped and misrecognised.
Chapter 6 deals with the continuing struggle for recognition by the Australian Indigenous peoples. Subtitled ‘Reconciliation, Apology, Sovereignty’, the chapter offers a thorough review of academic work on the issue, classic as well as contemporary, and covers the recent Australian public debates and political milestones that marked this political space over the past decades. Densely though clearly written, crammed with authors and references, it is a valuable contribution to scholars interested in this field. However, this chapter, and the book in its entirety, would have profited from a bolder author’s voice that dares to be original and straightforward in launching one powerful theoretical arrow with a recognisable trajectory rather than hundreds of small ones that cannot hurt anyone, theoretically or politically. To put it bluntly, there are too many other people in this book and not enough Rachel Busbridge. The author was apparently at pains not to miss anyone relevant, and in the broad theoretical territory that she criss-crosses; this resulted in a situation where the reader, while seeking the original contribution, could not see the forest for the trees.
Overall, the book is a meticulously researched and competently written theoretical contribution to the debates on multiculturalism, nation and postcolonial citizenship and belonging, of interest to sociologists pursuing research in these fields.